Bullet Boy

Ricky comes out of prison, returns to Hackney and moves back in with his mother and little brother. A row on the road with an old friend escalates, a gun enters it, and his twelve-year-old brother Curtis watches all of it. The film is not interested in the pull of the gang. It is interested in what the younger brother learns: the real story is not the older brother's but the boy watching him. The scene in which the gun is found under a bed is the whole point of the film. The form is small-scale and observational. The streets are shot as places people live rather than as sets, and some of the cast are not professional actors. The coincidence behind the film is inseparable from its subject. Ashley Walters, a member of So Solid Crew, took the role a few months after his release from a sentence for gun possession, and had first read the script while inside. The man playing someone just out of prison had just come out of prison. Saul Dibb directed, from a script by Dibb and Catherine Johnson. Who it is for: viewers who like British social realism and stories of urban crime. Who it is not for: anyone wanting a solution or a lesson. The film rescues nobody and its ending is deliberately hard.